Easter Egg Hunt in the snow

Our annual "bunny ears" picture

Stevan

Savanna, Elijah and Cooper

Mitch and Easton

Grandma & Leah "The Easter bunnies"

Savanna found her kite on top of the sled

Treyton

Angie and Kate

McKay

Elijah giving Cooper instructions

Savanna

Mitch, Reid & Carolina

Treyton

McKay is so excited

It was freezing yesterday outside with a really cold wind, but we pressed forward and still had our Easter Egg Hunt at my parents. The kids had a lot of fun finding their prizes with their cousins. I think that even though it was really cold, it is important to continue with these annual traditions. It is important to the kids. They were excited because they each got new kites during their hunt. Who would have thought that snow boots would be necessary for an Easter Egg hunt?

Easter Eggs

Our sweet Carolina slept most of the time we were dyeing eggs- thank heavens.

Reid really getting into the coloring

AFter she woke up.

Mitchel

Savanna

Treyton

Reid and the kids

I love Easter, but dyeing Easter Eggs is one of my least favorite activities. (Basically I just don't like messes). But last night we did our Easter Eggs and it was very enjoyable. The older kids are getting old enough to do it without much help and they really had fun. And bonus, no one spilled any egg dye.

Spring Break

Last years Easter party at my parents

I don't have much to say except I don't know if I like the idea of a week long spring break, I guess if you were going to go on a vacation it would be nice, but since we are at home it has seemed really long. We have tried to do fun things every day, along with doing chores and keep up on the reading through the break so we don't fall behind in our school progress, but the kids have been bickering non-stop all week so far.

The good thing has been we have adapted a new system that I am planning on using during the summer break to get chores and reading done daily. I've never been much of a fan of the idea of an "allowance", but I have found that the kids need to have some kind of an incentive to keep them going. So if they do their chores and their reading each day they get a sticker on the chart, then at the end of the week they get a quarter for each sticker. This gives them the chance to "earn" some money, have the opportunity to pay tithing, and help me to not be such a nag about getting things done. Because all I have to say is "if you don't do it you won't get a quarter for today. Enough said. This has worked well, at least this week. Hopefully it will work for the long summer ahead.

I am excited for the end of the week to celebrate all the Easter festivities. I have always loved Easter, probably because it always fell close to my birthday so there was always lots of fun during the time. Plus I love conference weekend and listening to the general authorities.

I have such fond memories as a child of Easter Egg Hunts at my Grandma Romrell's. She always made such a huge effort to get all her grandkids together and we also celebrated all the grandkids birthday's at Easter. She called it her "un-birthday party." Since she had so many grandkids, and they spent the Winter in Arizona she started just having one big birthday party and gave everyone their presents during that time. I just feel happy thinking of those parties. I feel like because of all the effort she made to have get togethers I was very close to my cousins which was so nice to know that I always had a friend in them.

Update from yesterday's post

I didn't realize that posting Savanna's bad day yesterday would upset so many people. I had many phone calls today and lots of comments posted about how bad they felt for Savanna. She had a much better day today, she found some other kids to play with and she got a special delivery at school from a "secret admirer". She came home with a big smile on her face. It is so nice to know that so many people care about our girl.

Friends come and go, but why is it so hard?

My darling girl Savanna is just about the perfect child (at least in my eyes), but the poor thing had a rough day and I felt like we had an important Mother daughter moment. Usually she is very self motivated when it comes to getting her homework and reading done, it takes very little encouragement from me for her to get the things done in the day that she needs to. But today was different, she did not want to do her reading and she was being a bit of a stinker about it. After a lecture from me about doing it she just started to cry and told me that she hated her life and wished she were dead. This came as a big suprise to me because she is usually a very happy, optimistic child. I wan't sure how to respond to this so I just let her cry for a bit while I held her. Then I asked her what was going on that would make her feel this way. She told me that she didn't have any friends at school that she could play with. I asked her specifically about some girls in her class that I know she has been friends with. She told me that they had new friends that were mean and that they didn't want to play with her anymore. This broke my heart. I remember so vividly having similar experiences in school and how painful that was. So how do you tell a 7 year old, that it will pass and not to worry about it.

I told her that instead of worrying about who she could play with during recess to look around and see if she could find any kids at the school that looked like they didn't have anyone to play with and to try and be their friend. I told her to remember how sad you feel right now, and that you don't want anyone else to feel that same way. I also told her that sometimes friends come and go, but she can always come home and know that her Mom and Dad and siblings love her no matter what, and she can have confidence that she will always have friends at home. I hope that in some way I was able to help her feel better.

I knew that my kids would have issues like this in their lives, just like everyone else, but I didn't realize that it would happen so soon. I hope that this little girl can come home tomorrow and be much happier.

Savanna's class pictures

So since I posted Mitchel's class picture I thought that I better also post Savanna's. Savanna and Mitchel have both had a really good year so far in school and I feel very lucky. I also put their Spring school pictures on. (the ones that I didn't buy- yes, I scanned them in on my computer and sent them back to school. Is that wrong?) I didn't order them and I would rather pay for pictures that are a little better. (Ok now I am feeling kind of guilty!)

What is wrong with this picture!

Seriously? Didn't the photographer look at this and say, oh we better take another one, that kids is picking his pants out of his bum. I think that Mitch looks really cute, but come on!